Tricksters and Serendipities
The spirits I've connected with recently, and how we nourish the Inner Garden
This year, 2025, we celebrate the 50th year of Sikolohiyang Pilipino (Filipino Psychology, also known as SP or SikoPil). It’s a great time to assess whether the field has succeeded in its aim to be liberated (malaya) and liberating (mapagpalaya). This semester, I am teaching introductory classes on SP. My public lectures also continue. There have been many great and valid criticisms of SP, and for those interested, you can read Sylvia Estrada Claudio’s spirited feminist critique in her 2017 paper, “Has Sikolohiyang Pilipino (Filipino Psychology) become Sikolohiya ng mga Pilipino sa Pilipinas (Psychology of the Filipinos in the Philippines)?”1 Madelene Sta. Maria had also given her criticism on the limitations of SP in a 1996 paper titled, “Is the Indigenization Crisis in Philippine Social Sciences Resolved in Sikolohiyang Pilipino?”
In any case, SP isn’t the only indigenization movement in the Philippines—there is also Pantayong Pananaw (For-Us-By-Us) and Pilipinolohiya (now “Philippine Studies”). Although my work draws so much from these varied fields, and my perspective aligns with the critical paradigm they present, I carry perspectives that are also quite outside these great academic movements. It’s not really my responsibility to define what “Filipino culture” is, or who gets to be “more Filipino.” I resist linear and atomistic notions surrounding identity and meaning-making. In these, Sikodiwa and SikoPil are aligned. I would say that my work is connected to culture, yes, but in the experiential sense, not in the materialistic, definite, geopolitical sense. Anyhow, I find our ancient wisdom remarkably refreshing, particularly since I was raised with a very Westernized worldview.
Doing the Work
Apart from the exclusive lectures I deliver monthly for subscribers of my Patreon, I delivered two special lectures for Valentine’s week: the first on cultural expressions of love, and the other on the concept of Kapwa. I’ve requested that my talks be recorded, and they are now uploaded on YouTube.
Here’s the one on love, delivered on February 11, at Faura AVR in Ateneo de Manila University. My thanks to Ateneo Lingua Ars Cultura for inviting me to give this talk:
The one on Kapwa is a lecture delivered in Tagalog to senior high school students of the University of Santo Tomas:
For this event, I was with other Indigenous scholars. Jennifer Tupaz and Maria Todi invited everyone to participate in T’boli hospitality by visiting Lake Sebu and learning about the people and their ways. This helps with both cultural preservation and tourism. Interestingly, there seems to have been a trickster (duwende) at the event, or so my fellow speakers believed, since the tools we were using to present weren’t working. Genevieve Kupang, an Indigenous educator from Baguio, conducted a short appeasement ceremony for the spirits present, and lo! the computers started working again. They believed that some spirits didn’t like it when there are gatherings like this, where culture bearers gather to share wisdom. It also seems to be a very odd coincidence that right after this event, I got quite sick. Maybe it’s because I’ve been somewhat pushing myself recently, but it could also be that I bumped into something that was lurking at the event—whatever it is, puwera usog!
I’m also excited to share that I was finally able to connect with nature storyteller Celine Murillo, whose work increases awareness on local saribuhay (biodiversity) through well-produced short videos on native plants and animals. I will be sharing the audio recording of our first actual meeting, as well as a corrected and translated transcript—all for free on my Patreon. Because of the informal nature of our conversation, we had to go back and forth to fact check some of the things we discussed, and hopefully the transcription can provide better clarity and insight while retaining the spirit of our discussion.
Tending to the Inner Garden
All in all, it has been an eventful past weeks. Although it has been pleasantly stimulating, it has already been quite tiring. Happily, I was able to take some time here and there to care for myself and the people I love. Last week, I spontaneously took a bus to La Union with my partner. We were able to visit Puón bookshop, in the Alfredo F. Tadiar library, where they still carry some of my old zines.
Before returning to Manila, we met my friend, Czyka, who offered to cook us a delicious, hearty lunch. I haven’t seen her and her daughter, Sophie, in a while! I met Z in the zine scene, many years ago, when I had a table at an art fair in Makati. She is affiliated with Isip Kwago.
Funnily enough, the day before, I had bumped into another Z, Z Santillan, who runs Pilipinas Journal. Her space holds an important place in my heart, because she was the first collaborator I had as Sikodiwa.
We talked about past events and some plans for the future. These connections have been so important and serendipitous. It reminds me that I don’t exist alone in this larger field; I am part of an ecology of different practitioners, each doing their part to nurture the shared garden. Although these meeting points were brief, they held so much potential, and we all felt it. We were all excited, and we knew that there was still so much to be said.
Recent Readings
I’ll end this sharing with what I’ve been reading lately. I finished Hilot: The Art and Science of the Ancient Filipino Healing Arts by Bibiano Fajardo and Ma. Aleli Pansacola (Anvil Publishing Inc., 2013). I found it interesting in terms of the metaphors and cultural frameworks used, but it referenced too much unrelated or pseudoscientific things (e.g. phrenology, Esperanto) and it didn’t have enough care to get a medical consultant, despite it presenting a lot of medical advice. I much prefer Michael L. Tan’s Revisiting Usog, Pasma, Kulam (University of the Philippines Press, 2008), which is sadly out of print, but I was able to borrow it from a colleague in the psychology department.
I also skimmed through Jesucita Sodusta’s Jamoyawon Ritual: A Territorial Concept (University of the Philippines Press, 1983) for a class I am taking on myths and rituals with Fr. Hermel Pama. What struck me the most was how indigenous offerings to spirits aren’t technically gifts, but negotiations with implicit contracts (e.g. “If you eat this food, you’re saying you allow us to build a house here”). I hope for more published research like this, produced by dedicated scholars, made accessible to the public.
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I should let you know, however, that Dr. Claudio had also recently published an essay against gender affirmation.